14th March - Today's News: Heavy Snow on Oregon Coast

Probably the last update till next week as I'm away for MBA meetings in Glasgow on Friday and probably won't have time to do anything tomorrow. But the weather's pretty quiet around the world at the moment after the excitement in the US and Australia earlier this month.

In Australia, cool, wet weather fails to dilute evidence of warming - I'm not convinced I entirely agree with CO2 affecting temp and sea levels more than natural variability, and as usual they seem to have forgotten that there's a lot more to AGW than GHGs But I agree that cool wet weather caused by La Nina does not mean warming isn't happening nor that warmer and drier conditions won't increase over the coming decades due to AGW, all else being equal.

A good piece from the Met Office answering the question why are we in drought? And comaring the current situation with 1975/6. Interesting to see that the Midlands are in a much greater rainfall deficit than the SE where most of the hosepipe bans have been placed. Also worth noting that the Nov 10 - Feb 12 rainfall figure for Evesham is just 508.8mm which is 61% of the 61-90 average. Meanwhile, first desalination plant opens in mainland Britain as water bosses warn of price rises (Jersey already has a desalination plant - hence the still inaccurate use of 'mainland Britain').

The idea of this blog is to produce a regular round up of global weather and related news stories which then acts as an archive. Some links may be lost in time but by searching the original headline on Google it should be possible to find related stories. Additionally, it gives me somewhere to add my own thoughts on some stories, as the mood takes me.